Walking Backwards. Mark Frutkin

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СКАЧАТЬ This time it didn’t stop until it reached Belgrade in the morning.

      We had decided to stay over in Belgrade and catch the next train coming through to Istanbul twenty-four hours later. Belgrade in January was a revelation, a revelation of a dark, bleary, smudged sort. We exited the train into a decrepit downtown train station where a platoon of ancient women in babushkas swished brown sludge around the floor in a vain attempt to sweep clean the mud, snow, and sleet that was coming in on the badly made, worn-out boots of the workers.

      Through a travel office in the station, we found a place to stay. Like something out of an animated cartoon or a modern version of an Eastern European folk tale, the old lady’s little house in which we were sequestered was the only residential structure in the sector and was surrounded by faceless grey towers where happiness could only be a faint memory and the future was already perfectly planned at least five years ahead. The old lady herself proved to be a spark of warmth in a cold land. She introduced us to her son, a medical doctor visiting for the holidays from Switzerland. Wanting nothing to do with us wild-looking and possibly dangerous students from America, he kept his distance. Our landlady pointed us in the direction of a café district to take our evening meal where we dined on ground horsemeat. If it wasn’t horsemeat (and I am no expert), it must have been beef from an extraordinarily lean and well-exercised cow.

      When we returned, we were introduced to the delights of sleeping on a traditional oven-bed. Our sleeping quarters (quarters is hardly the right word, for the oven took up one entire side of the sitting room in her toy house) consisted of a bed laid out on top of a huge tiled oven over four feet high. It was cozy and warm. Unfortunately, there were three of us sharing it. It was another interesting night in a long series of interesting nights. With three grown men in one bed, all fully clothed, it was impossible to find a comfortable position. Sleep, when it arrived at all, came in fits and starts.

      The next day, when we returned to the main station to catch our train, we learned that this day’s train to Istanbul would only be stopping at a station in the distant suburbs. The ticket-taker waved us out to a bus stop on the street and we waited in a panic, not wanting to spend another hour — let alone another excruciating day — in a bleak Belgrade that looked like a set for a badly made film noir.

      After a journey of a half-hour on a packed city bus, we approached the small train station. Somehow the two Michaels were able to elbow their way to the exit, but I was unable to push through the crowd before the bus pulled away. What the hell! I glanced out the window at snow-covered fields as I struggled to exit. I had to wait for the next stop, at least a couple kilometres away. The train was coming in ten minutes. I couldn’t make it by running. Fortunately, a taxi stood waiting nearby. I got across to the driver — I didn’t know a word of Serbian — that I needed to get to that train station, vite! He sped away with me panting in the back and when we pulled up, I tossed a handful of coins at him and fled. I rushed into the station, joined the two Michaels, and we boarded the train for Istanbul.

      The fields of Bulgaria in January were no more intriguing than the grey streets of midwinter Belgrade. Even the newly fallen snow in the countryside looked dirty. We came through Sophia, noted a few huge renditions of social realist art hanging on the sides of buildings (happy red-cheeked steelworkers forty feet high), and soon bid farewell to Bulgaria. It was Istanbul or bust for us. That was when we met Ahmed.

      He wasn’t much older than we were, but definitely wiser in the ways of the world, a charming Arab with a ready smile and perfect teeth. He explained that he was working in England (we didn’t catch his occupation or he didn’t say) and was heading home to Jordan for the holidays. He was affable, courteous, and generous, as we soon learned when he pulled the unopened bottle of Johnnie Walker out of his suitcase and began passing it around. It wasn’t enough to get the four of us seriously drunk, but we did enter a pleasantly mellow phase of the journey. It was then he asked us to stick the bolts of cloth in our packs and take them through customs for him. He asked in such a friendly way — no pressure, no panic, almost as if it were an afterthought — that it seemed only natural to agree. In late afternoon, the engine hooted one last time and the long train guttered and shivered into the Istanbul train station.

      The two Michaels and I stand in line in the station, awaiting our turn to approach the customs table, still wondering what has happened to Ahmed. The customs inspector is motioning us forward. Irish Michael and Lebanese Michael somehow decide without consulting me, or each other for that matter, that I should lead this little parade of three. With an unerring instinct for survival, their hands push me, the one with the honest-looking face, into the front. Hitching my pack higher on my shoulder, I walk forward, trying to look nonchalant yet sufficiently respectful of authority, trying not to look guilty and yet attempting to reveal the appropriate amount of uncertainty and fear. I ask myself how I can be both invisible and yet appear as a dutiful, law-abiding crosser-of-borders. I grip my American passport. As I near the table, I hold it forth for the customs inspector to take. His face, with thick, grown-together eyebrows and a moustache to rival Stalin’s, is not unfriendly nor is it genial. His large, brown, sleepy eyes look into mine, judging in a moment whether I look like the smuggling type or not, deciding in a fleeting instant what my future will hold.

      His eyes slide from mine as he leans forward to take the passport hovering in my hand before him. But before he grasps it, he notices the cover, which I have turned so he can read it. PASSPORT — United States of America, with its rampant eagle crest, all printed in gold. Behind me, the two Michaels proffer their own documents like supplicants, one on each side of me, but slightly behind, our three passports resembling a meagre flock of three eagles flying in formation. On seeing that we are Americans, instantly, without a moment’s hesitation, he waves us on, not even taking my passport to check it. Not believing our good luck, but trying not to look overly elated, we three scurry to the next official who sits at his wicket automatically and mindlessly stamping all passports presented to him, including ours.

      And with that, we tumble out of the train station into the raw January dusk, snow still falling heavily. Instantly, a jinn arising out of a smoking lamp, Ahmed appears at our sides. “Come. Follow me,” he says.

      He leads us to a nearby hotel in a decrepit-looking two-storey building. We follow. The snow is floating down in fat flakes. I stare at it. This is Istanbul; it’s supposed to be warm. Why is it snowing? As we enter the hotel lobby, we see about twenty Turkish and Arab men — rough-looking characters with facial scars and heavy-lidded eyes — sitting around a tiny round stove that is gasping out a nimbus of feeble heat at one end of the room. As we wait for Ahmed to make arrangements at the counter, the men stare at us with hard looks as if we are one of those slabs of lamb hanging on a spit on a street-side stall. We stare back wide-eyed.

      Heading upstairs to our room, we pass by a young woman with sores on her lips. “Probably from syphilis,” whispers Irish Michael as we open the door on a spacious room with three single beds in it. Ahmed’s own room is elsewhere in the hotel. After collecting his three bolts of cloth from us, he hurries down the hall.

      We drop off our packs in our room and head out to have dinner with Ahmed who has decided to treat us to a meal for taking part in his little smuggling scheme.

      After dinner at a tiny, nearly empty restaurant, Ahmed offers to take us to a special place on the far side of town. We nod our heads. Sure. Fine. Sounds good.

      We start walking down the street and hop a taxi, which drops us off in a run-down residential area that is darker than the inside of a stone at the bottom of the sea. The air contains a slight tang of salt. In the mess that has turned from snow to sleet and rain, we start following a muddy street that climbs a long hill. Through the blackness we notice there are a lot of people around, all men it seems, walking up and down the hill. But there are no lights ahead to announce where we are going. At the top of the hill, we come to a high, wooden fence on our left, and, following Ahmed, we step through a narrow gate. Just inside the gate is a police sentry СКАЧАТЬ